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Life Is No Long Cruise

I love meeting people who are planning to retire soon. “What are you planning to do?” I always ask.

Inevitably, I get an answer along the lines of “my wife and I are planning to take a cruise.”

Hmmm. With a healthy life expectancy ahead of 20-30 more years, that would be a very long cruise.

Rarely do I encounter someone who gives me a big answer — goals that could fill 30 years. But that’s the type of answer each of us should have, well before we come close to retirement.

We should be thinking of new skills we’d like to learn, education yet to be pursued. We should identify ways to stay connected socially and active physically, whether through volunteer work, community outreach, or simply greater involvement with friends and family. Perhaps most important, we should be figuring out ways to remain economically productive — whether through part-time or project-based work or even a new entrepreneurial venture.

Financial motivations are part of the reason. The reality is most of us will need more money than we will have saved by age 62 or 65 in order to live securely for another 30 years. Even modest continued earnings dramatically change the NPV calculation.

But financial issues are only part of the need for a big answer. Boomers will be the first generation to have what could be called a new life-stage: 20 or 30 years of relatively healthy, post-child-rearing adult life. This is a tremendous gift and an exciting opportunity. It’s certainly not something most of our parents enjoyed.

How ironic that the generation once called the “Me Generation” will be the first to experience a “Me Life-stage.” One in which our attention, rightly so, can be more focused on what we’d like to achieve than on the sacrifices and trade-offs necessary for rearing young children. One with concentrated blocks of time to devote to our own interests, rather than the constant need to juggle the competing demands that complicated pursuit of our first career.

This longer life span presents Boomers, as well as generations to follow, with an opportunity for a do-over. Surveys show that over three-quarters of us have not enjoyed our first careers, the work experiences during our first 30 years of work. This is a second pass to get it right, to find a career we love, that will nourish us intellectually and emotionally, as well as at some level (perhaps far more modestly than our first career), financially.

I wrote the book Retire Retirement before the recession. It is a guide for ways to approach finding your second 30-year career, but even more so, a plea to begin doing so. Based on interviews with hundreds of Boomers who were concerned about continuing to create value during those post-retirement years, even when their financials were in seemingly good order, I am convinced that few if any Boomers ever wanted to retire in the old-fashioned sense. Doing away with any notion that older individuals should “drop out” will benefit each of us as individuals.

And retiring the idea of retirement will also benefit our society. Most gloom and doom commentaries about future economic trends in developed nations are based on the assumption that people will choose to spend the last 30 years of their lives on a long cruise — consuming resources, while making no productive contribution. This assumption is almost certainly wrong. Whether for financial need or intellectual and emotional satisfaction — most people will contribute. Most will work.

The truth is we have no idea what the impact of a significant adult population, blessed with their health and with far fewer distractions than any adult population before has faced, might have on our society. It’s possible that, rather than the projected economic Armageddon, we are in fact heading for a renaissance, a time when innovation, entrepreneurship, culture, and community service are all re-invigorated by the legions of 60 to 90 year olds marching into second careers.

But all this requires planning or perhaps more accurately, imagining your second career.

I’ve got nothing against a quick cruise, but don’t head into so-called “retirement” without a 30-year answer to my question: what are your plans for your second 30 years?

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